Multiple leadership changes is irrelevant.
A cult is a religion that presents itself as Christian, yet introduces people to a different Jesus than the one who was born in Jerusalem a couple thousand years.
If the teachings of the Bible are corrected, those who fall for this deception are being robbed of a salvation experience with God. If they are not introduced to the genuine Jesus they are lost.
The cults use the same language as Christianity, but with different meanings. They shroud the deception well, and one has to press hard to find out what they are really saying.
Christians differ on many theological points, but those differences should not cause us to separate from one another. But there are fundamentals facts that are absolutely essential to being a true believer. We cannot tolerate false teachings on those fundamentals.
Those fundamentals center on the deity of Jesus, on His birth, His sacrificial death, His resurrection and on the salvation He provided to men.
When Christians find someone deceiving people with a false gospel we treat it with the same seriousness as someone giving children in the neighborhood candy laced with drugs or razor blades. We know the truth of God, of salvation through Jesus, of hell, and of the sin nature of man. If someone misses God’s grace because they embraced a deadly counterfeit it is an unspeakable tragedy. I’ve known people who wasted much of their lives in cults, and were scarred for years even after they found the truth.
If Christianity is just a “be nice” country club, then we can hang out with cultists. They just have a different focus of their club and are simply competition for members.
But if Christianity is a life and death battle with powers and principalities and rulers in high places then the cultist is an agent of enemy forces luring unsuspecting people to their destruction. His teachings must be openly opposed to make the differences between his gospel and God’s gospel evident to all.
Well said.
Excellent post.